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July 13, 2011

Huckabee: Eating His Words, Unfortunately Pancakes Too

by Barbara Berkeley, MD

This post often receives a large number of views after Huckabee does a television appearance. It was written in 2011 after I noticed his considerable weight gain while flipping channels. Ironically, Huckabee has just published a book called "God, Guns, Grits and Gravy".
If you are new to this blog, welcome to Refuse to Regain. I am a physician who has specialized in obesity for over twenty years and enjoys sharing knowledge and insights based on experience. For more on weight and avoiding regain search the archives, or get a quick peek by clicking on "Best of Refuse to Regain" in the categories column. You can also follow the continuing conversation on Facebook, at Refuse to Regain: Barbara's World. To access my book on how to lose weight and successfully maintain, please click on the cover image to the left of this post.

Ah, the addictive power of modern food. Never underestimate it.

On a recent trip to New York I happened to be flipping through channels on my in-flight TV when I ran across Mike Huckabee doing an interview on Fox News. I was surprised to see that he had gained his weight back. The former governor of Arkansas and presidential candidate had staked quite a bit on the success of a 100 pound weight reduction in 2003. He ran marathons, wrote a book about diet (called "Quit Digging Your Grave with A Knife and Fork"),and made obesity and healthy living a central issue in his political portfolio. He was appointed to expert panels and interviewed endlessly about how he became lean and healthy. Yet even this very public and seemingly highly committed person could not avoid regain right in front of our eyes. In other words, he did an Oprah.

Huckabee's weight loss was motivated by a doctor who told the Governor that he would likely die in less than 10 years if he remained obese. To his credit, Huckabee took this message seriously, lost a great deal of weight and became a flag bearer for the healthy living movement. What could have caused him to put it all back on?

Those who have successfully maintained weight losses over many years never feel that their new state is permanent or assured. I have worked with enough maintainers to know that successful POWs (previously overweight persons) fear that they are, in fact, just one wrong spoonful from total regain. Huckabee's weight saga and many other cautionary tales of regain that play out in the public arena validate this concern.

Did Huckabee say anything during his lean years that foreshadowed his return to obesity? I believe he left some clues that suggested how things might go.

I had to learn that it was a change of lifestyle. And my goal wasn't to lose weight. And that's why this time I was successful, as opposed to previous times in my life. And I would lose weight, but then gain it back and add some to it.

There is rarely a discussion about weight loss that doesn't include the word "lifestyle". Personally, I'd like expunge this word from the dictionary. It's nice to talk about changing lifestyle, but it is utterly meaningless if we can't define the specifics of that change. Governor Huckabee sounds great because he's restating the conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom can often be just that: conventional. Weight maintainers that have been successful longterm realize that it is crucial to delve into the minute details of "lifestyle change". Most of us assume that lifestyle change means a vague mix of fewer calories and more exercise. But truly successful maintainers would tell you that a maintenance life is something quite different. It is a well-reasoned, controlled existence that is structured around a healthy avoidance of specific trigger foods. It involves a specifically designed and executed eating style, a reliance on supported environments, specific and consistent exercise routines, and the maintenance of extreme vigilance. Maintenance requires this because modern food is addictive, plain and simple. It takes several layers of planning to oppose it. In addition, the body is built with an automatic desire to regain weight after it is lost. It is possible to oppose this desire, but only if the maintainer is highly engaged and follows a consistent and specific plan. Did Huckabee have that plan in place?

2. In 2010, when Huckabee's weight regain was already apparent, he wrote an opinion piece for Fox called, In Praise of McDonald's. It was written after efforts by the Center for Science in the Public Interest to eliminate toys from Happy Meals. Here are some exerpts:

Blaming the packaging of a toy for overeating and under-exercising of kids makes silly what ought to be a serious issue: Obesity is a serious problem that has stunning health consequences and staggering economic consequences. But it hasn't been caused by toys and won't be resolved by getting rid of toys.

When a person is overfed and then under-exercised so that more calories are consumed than used, there will be weight gain. A 3-year-old probably isn't counting calories, but parents can. The 3-year-old probably isn't measuring activity levels and aerobic activity, but parents should.

Unless you take your kids to McDonald's and drop them off to be parented, it's stupid to blame McDonald's because they put a toy in a Happy Meal. When I was a kid, there was a prize in the Cracker Jack box, but I really can't blame my own weight challenges throughout my life to overdosing on Cracker Jack because I was digging for the prize. A person would have to be addicted to crack, not Cracker Jack, to blame the toys in the box for eating too much stuff in the box.

What makes my Happy Meal happy is that as a corporation, McDonald's didn't cave to the pin-headed pressure to political correctness, but pushed back to the loons on the left who seem to forget that Americans not only have personal freedom, but personal responsibility.

Like the lifestyle comment, what Huckabee says here sounds logical. Parents should protect kids. Toys don't cause obesity. But it's only logical because we accept the food world as it is marketed to us. Those who produce fattening and addictive foods want us to take responsibility for making poor choices, but many modern foods are not so different from the crack that Governor Huckabee references. There is strong science that suggests that modern junk foods act on the same area of the brain as addictive drugs. Toys in Happy Meals are just one of the many marketing ploys used to lure buyers to an addictive substance. And the practice is a particularly heinous one as it plays on the vulnerabilities of kids. The Happy Meal (and other alluringly marketed foods) also sets up unnecessary battles which pit a child's desires against those of concerned parents.

Governor Huckabee believes that controlling weight---our own and that of our children---is a matter of personal responsibility Those who stand up for what they believe will be thin and the others just lack personal fortitude. If Huckabee's worldview was correct, it would now be time to hoist the quite-heavy governor on his own petard. He talked the talk, led the charge, and failed. By his reasoning, he must be weak...just like all those parents who give in to the Happy Meal. But I don't believe that. Huckabee simply got it wrong, like most people who lose weight. And he paid the price.

Karen Tumulty, who interviewed the former governor in February for the Washington Post observed this scene:

Huckabee was tucking into a breakfast of eggs and butter-slathered pancakes at a trendy New York hotel overlooking Times Square. His much-discussed diet - he famously lost more than 100 pounds after a diabetes diagnosis in 2003 and wrote a book about eating right - is apparently on hiatus.

What are we to make of a man who has been told he has a possible death sentence if he's over-fat,who writes books about the importance of avoiding obesity, who stakes a political career on advocacy for better habits and then goes ahead and chows down in front of a reporter for a major newspaper? Unlike Huckabee, I wouldn't call him irresponsible or weak. I'd say he's acting like someone with an addiction. An addiction that has re-established itself.

What else but a powerful, powerful urge could motivate someone to behave in a way that makes him look foolish and subjects him to unwanted scrutiny? To betray an entire belief system once espoused? To perhaps give rivals a wedge against future political ambitions?

The key to successful, permanent maintenance lies in a healthy respect for the damaging effects of the food that got you fat. It involves learning, planning, and never underestimating the power of our modern diet to take over. To avoid being overwhelmed again, each maintainer needs to build many walls of defense. Otherwise, and sadly, he might easily find himself eating more than his words.

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